Welcome to the New and Improved Civil War Memory

It is with great excitement that I unveil the new design for Civil War Memory. Thanks to Dino Latoga with E.Webscapes for his help with the design and format of the blog. He was very patient with me and I especially dig the banner he came up with, which captures many of the central themes on this site. I’ve also uploaded a Beta Version of WordPress 2.7. The final version is scheduled to be released any day now, but I wanted to check out the new interface and some of the new features. I am very excited about the threaded comments feature, which will allow you to respond directly to specific comments. Hopefully, this will allow for more extended discussions and make it easier for readers to follow various threads. Because this is a Beta version of 2.7 there may be a few glitches. Please let me know if there are any visual problems depending on your browser or any other problems you notice. We may make a few more changes over the next few days so your comments are very much appreciated.

Update: I decided to go with a single sidebar. One of the glitches I am dealing with is the inability to move the various elements in the sidebar. This has prevented me from including widgets such as Library Thing. These changes are forthcoming. Bob Pollock inquired into why Lee, rather than Grant, is stuck between Lincoln and Douglass. He’s probably right about that, and to be honest I didn’t give it much thought other than that I wanted Lee prominently featured on the banner.

Had thought about why no Confederate flag and thought to task you on that; but its your thing – and you should never mess up someone’s groove.
Then again, you get into which Confederate flag, any of the Nationals or the ANV battle flag, etc. And it all seems a matter of personal preference.
I like Douglass looking over Lee’s shoulder as if to serve as fact checker on both Lee and Lincoln: each one held accountable to the other and each in line to tell their story, share their memory. Add Grant certainly but don’t short change Douglass, please.

Harry, — It’s definitely a Wordpress.org update. You can try to upload Intense Debate, which is owned by Wordpress. It offers a number of features beyond the threaded comments that may enhance the comment discussions. I tried to upload it when I was with Typepad, but it didn’t quite work. You may want to give it a shot. It definitely improves the reader’s ability to respond to specific points.

Maybe I’ve been totally oblivious of it (or it was just made available), but I just realized that WordPress.com blogs have a box at the end of the comment box that gives the person making a comment the chance to know when a reply is made to their comment. Does WordPress.org offer anything like that? I ask because I’m still trying to figure out whether or not I want to shif to WordPress.org.